colloq. Also 9 -et. [App. a vulgar alteration of WORRY v. Cf. WHERRIT, WERRIT.]
1. trans. To worry, distress, vex, pester.
1818. Lamb, Lett. to Mrs. Wordsworth, 18 Feb. These pests worrit me at business.
1837. Dickens, Pickw., xxvi. ‘Don’t worrit your poor mother,’ said Mrs. Sanders.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, lviii. Lord bless us, how she did use to worret us at Sunday-school.
1854. W. Collins, Hide & Seek, II. xiv. (1904), 313. Why worrit yourself about finding Arthur Carr at all?
1869. J. R. Green, Lett., III. (1901), 235. I have been worriting myself these last days with those Welsh chaps and our early history, but I am getting more and more to think that one is lured into cloud-land by them.
b. with advb. extension.
1854. W. Collins, Hide & Seek, II. x. (1904), 259. It don’t do me no good: it only worrits me into a perspiration.
1855. Trollope, Warden, viii. 116. Sir Abrabam won’t get papa another income when he has been worreted out of the hospital.
1871. Geo. Eliot, Middlemarch, xxvi. II. 66. It will worret you to death, Lucy; that I can see.
2. intr. To give way to worry; to experience or display mental disquietude, impatience, etc.
1854. W. Collins, Hide & Seek, II. xiv. (1904), 317. It was how to track the man as was Mary’s death, that I puzzled and worrited about in my head, at that time.
1857. Kingsley, Two Y. Ago, viii. (1881), 127. He … snaps, and worrits, and won’t speak to her sometimes for a whole morning.
1868. Whyte-Melville, White Rose, vii. ‘Look alive, girl! Come—bustle, bustle! It’s gone six o’clock.’ ‘Why, father, how you keep on worriting!’
Hence Worriting vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1857. Dickens, Dorrit, I. xxiii. There would be none of this *worriting and wearing.
1845. Geraldine Jewsbury, Zoe, I. 33. [He] is just the naughtiest and most *worritting boy ever saw.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., 1. xi. 194. Here and there some … worriting, energizing mortal … gets command of a boat.
1871. Smiles, Character, viii. 219. Worreting, petty, and self-tormenting cares.
